The popular energy drink Red Bull’s original tagline “gives you wings” and its ads showing soaring jumpers has nothing on two Lansing, Michigan, men who were the original batmen.

In the 1930s and 1940s, Clem Sohn and Charles Frank Zmuda thrilled audiences worldwide by jumping from a plane and soaring with bat-like wings. Both men flew as part of Lansing’s Art Davis Air Show and travelled extensively performing their daredevil soaring. Sohn, whose family immigrated from Germany, was originally from Fowler, Michigan. Zmuda, from Palo, Michigan, came from a family of Polish immigrants. Both men lived in Lansing when they performed with Davis’ aerial circus.

The early batwings were homemade from canvas with metal stretchers to give them form. Sohn was the original batman and while jumping at an airshow in Paris, France, in 1937, his chute failed to open and he fell to his death. Following the death of Sohn, his friend Charlie Zmuda from another small Michigan town began the daring escapade and made more than 200 jumps from high altitude soaring through the air like a bat. Although Zmuda was injured several times as batman, he lived to become a pilot for American Airlines flying out of Midway-Chicago. In another tragedy, Clem Sohn’s father, a Lansing Police Officer, would die in the line of duty in 1943 while apprehending a suspect.